In 1562, Don Carlos, the eldest son of Spain’s King Philip II, fell grievously ill. His distraught father, having tried every trick and remedy, finally prayed to God: “If you can give me the miracle of healing my son, I will give you a miracle back.” Within a week, Carlos was back on his feet. To return a miracle, the king commissioned a highly-skilled clockmaker to come up with a machine of prayer. The engineer created an automaton resembling a monk, which could move its lips as if in prayer, would beat its chest with one hand, while the other hand held a rosary. Essentially, King Philip had outsourced the idea of supplication, prayer and piety, to a robot.
Science fiction writer, humorist and filmmaker Neil Pagedar recalls this legend while discussing his debut series Ok Computer, a sci-fi comedy thriller swarming with desi robots, holograms and self-driving cars. Pagedar was emphasising the point that people have been imagining and creating robots for centuries, and it is not exactly a modern pursuit. It is the idea of consciousness that really captivated the team behind Ok Computer.
Set in 2031, where giant holographic traffic cops rule the roads, a self-driving car goes rogue and mangles a pedestrian beyond recognition. Inevitably, questions arise if it was an accident or murder. The protagonist is a robot called Ajeeb and it is him/her who comes of age in the film.
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The series lines up the likes of Vijay Varma, Radhika Apte and Jackie Shroff. Through the device of an oddball comedy, the makers want to communicate the idea of AI and robotics without talking down to the audience. “While we don't know enough about human consciousness itself, we have attempted now to create a very sophisticated version of synthetic consciousness,” says Pagedar. “Our own morality is completely constructed; our laws are completely artificial and have evolved over thousands of years. Will those laws, morality and ethics inform synthetic consciousness that does not share our biology? What ethics would these machines rely on when they are only two decades old? That is the thesis of the show.”
There was the need to create an AI-centric story that seemed plausible to an Indian audience, strongly rooted in hard science. India has not participated in the larger AI debates around ethics and philosophy, but with a deeper penetration of such technologies in our society, the time has come to do so.
The filmmakers stress that technology is progressing beyond the grasp of human understanding and there is an urgent need to look at the social and political frameworks that guide these breakthroughs. Bad policy is only going to be the bane of scientific progress. “AI and robots should be non-racist, non-misogynist, more egalitarian and equitable,” says Pooja Shetty, cowriter and codirector of the series. “So, as long as we are aware of that, technology is simply going to take our burdens away and make living easier.”